Potential Toyota Mirai Owners Being Directed to Wait List

The Toyota Mirai is quite a unique vehicle. Rather than being powered by a gasoline engine or fueled by electricity, the Mirai uses hydrogen as its fuel source, emitting only water vapor through its tailpipe. Given that it’s somewhat of a maverick in the green vehicle industry, Toyota will only allot around 1,000 models to customers in the US this year. For those lucky enough to be impending Mirai owners, their vehicles will be in their hands very soon.

Toyota opened up its Mirai order request portal a couple of months ago, and almost 1,900 people have requested ownership. Just expressing interest in owning a Mirai won’t necessarily get you one—Toyota has very stringent criteria for ownership of its first fuel-cell vehicle. Those who fit the criteria will get to drive away in a Mirai—if they were quick enough. Given the larger-than-expected demand, Toyota is now directing interested drivers to a Mirai wait list while waiting for production to catch up.

Part of the problem is that the Mirai is hand-built by a specialized team of 13 workers. This means that they are only able to build three vehicles per day on average. While some might see this as an issue, Toyota’s stringent production process makes the Mirai even more remarkable, since the process is unlike that for building most modern cars.

If you’re interested in a Mirai, you can still request ownership—but there’s no word on how long it’ll take before wait list customers are able to fulfill their dreams of Mirai ownership.